an infinity of outcomes
Elliott batTzedek

such fragility in stone if
atoms began to unbond themselves my house
would be dust or even mystery for a future Ph.D.
dung heap missing walls, stone
having become gas

and if our planet’s protons, depressed by the state of
things, go all negative on us we might
find ourselves water or copper or
toolittletoolate-amonium

a change so small you can barely
understand it, knowledge dissolving into
chaos of no-longer-theoretical-physics
probability disintegrating into
pray lib obit or baby lip riot or pitiably orb

anything, in short, could so easily be anything
else and yet you lie by me quivering
cells controlled by some unknown, alien, invader bent
on making your nerves set themselves ablaze, a burning
doctors cannot name so cannot help so I

am again up late looking for healers: psychics, palm readers,
proctors of past lives, providers of snake skins or bee balm,
re-birthers, re-energizers, the energizer bunny, particle physicists,
particle board, anything that might be
an answer or that at the very least will not stare past us proclaiming
Some people learn to live like this
for in a universe of infinite realities this can’t go on being real:
you lying there, like that
me watching you, like this